


The Random Collection of Rambling Tales

by Black_Betty



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005), Penelope (2006), Shame (2011), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, BAMF siblings, Cerebro, Costume Parties & Masquerades, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Genosha, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Musicals, Randomness, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, bilioburro
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-11-21
Packaged: 2017-12-12 08:14:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 13,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809340
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Black_Betty/pseuds/Black_Betty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various bits and pieces written on tumblr (and now hopefully the kink_meme too, if I can find them!) achieved here because I know eventually I'll lose them to the abyss known as my blog...</p><p>Most recent additions:</p><p>Chapter 11: After a night of drinking, Charles wakes up to more than he bargained for</p><p>Chapter 12: Charles is trying to study. Erik is distracting.</p><p>Chapter 13: True love and children and magic and creatures from the sea...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Don't Blink

**Author's Note:**

> 1: Doctor Who crossover written for our-girl-friday: Charles and Erik vs. the Weeping Angels  
> 2\. Johnny/Brandon fic written for kageillusionz: favourite movies  
> 3\. XMFC in canon Charles/Erik written for turtletotem: Erik provides some comfort when Charles has a nasty headache after using Cerebro  
> 4\. Charles/Erik (canon? Modern AU? who knows!) written for motleypatches who requested PILLOWS AND KITTENS! And you can't say no to kittens :D  
> 5\. Charles is leaving. Erik asks him to stay.  
> 6\. From trobador's prompt: BAMF shapeshifter Raven Darkholme and her adopted baby brother, telepath Charles Xavier.  
> 7\. (for a long-ago prompt on the kink_meme) Erik and Charles meet and dance together at a Genoshan Masquerade Ball. Too bad in real life they're sworn enemies...  
> 8\. (another long-ago fill on the kink meme) Erik admires Charles from afar, but is too shy to say anything to him. One night he watches Charles going home from the campus bar with another man...and something is not quite right (please heed warnings!)  
> 9\. Charles runs a biblioburro after the end of the world (yes, that's right, a donkey library)  
> 10: Erik is a busy man who doesn't have time to stop and take notice of the finer things in life...at least until one night when a young man and his violin catches his attention...  
> 11: After a night of drinking, Charles wakes up to more than he bargained for  
> 12: Charles is trying to study. Erik is distracting.  
> 13: True love and children and magic and creatures from the sea...

DON'T BLINK

“Charles. We have to move.”

Charles reaches back and feels around for Erik’s hand, clutching it tight when he finds it, though the angle is wrong and uncomfortable.

“I can’t darling. You know I can’t.”

Erik’s hand twitches in his grasp, and Charles can feel the muscles in his back tense where they are leaning against each other.

“I’ll carry you, I can feel your chair, I can fix it—“

Charles leans back, resting the full weight of his body against Erik’s,

“We can’t shut our eyes, remember? Not even for a moment. How much longer do you think we have?”

He feels Erik breathe out, shuddering and choked and he grips Charles’ hand painfully tight. He knows how hard this will be for Erik, letting go of his mission, of his life’s quest. Shaw is dead, but there had been so much more to do, so many plans they had made together once Erik had returned and laid his helmet and cape at Charles’ unfeeling feet.

He should have known the mansion was full of more evil than his stepfather's lust for money, the cruelty and brutality of his childhood, and the ghost of his mother’s cold heart. He should have known. He’s failed them all. Sean is gone, all the windows shattered in the west wing with the force of his scream, strangled as he disappeared in an instant. Charles still remembers how Sean’s consciousness was there in one moment and ripped away the next; jarring, disorienting. It was like falling into an empty void, and Charles is still head over feet, and not sure he'll ever find solid ground again.

“I’m sorry,” he says, “I’m so sorry Erik.” Erik doesn’t reply but his voice is streaming through Charles’ brain, repeating remorse and loss and complete love and devotion. It feels like absolution though Erik says there’s nothing to forgive.

Charles’ breathes in and out, slow, measured.

“I love you,” he says, in case there was any doubt. Towering over him, the stone figure seems to sway forward, beautiful placid face distorted and snarling, her gnarled fingers reaching for him. A monster frozen in time and space, ready to move in for the kill once darkness falls.

He thinks that might be the cruelest thing. That he’s forced to meet his end trapped in a relentless gaze with the enemy. That he won’t get to look at Erik one more time.

“Ready?” Erik asks and his voice low and furious to cover for fear. Not fear of death, never that, but losing Charles. Being without Charles. Here they are at the end and he’s not thinking of the cause, of his greater calling. He’s thinking only of Charles and how much he loves him.

Charles takes some comfort in that.

_Yes_  he whispers in Erik’s mind,  _I’m ready_.

 

 

 

 

(From somewhere in the distance he can hear the sound of metal on metal, a high-pitched drone that seems to come from everywhere and nowhere. The sound of an engine he remembers quite clearly from his childhood, and a voice that is just as dear singing through his mind like a whistling freight train,

_Hello Charles Xavier. What have you gotten yourself into this time?_ )


	2. Celluloid Strip

 

Most of the time, he was fine. Was great even. Brandon thought he might be happier than he’d been in long time. Maybe happier than he’d ever been, though the past was still a murky bottomless void, repressed and confused in the back of his brain. Maybe there was a moment of happiness there, a few days of sunshine and sand, but if there was Brandon didn’t care to remember it. He knew first hand what prodding the void did, and the inevitable spiral that would follow.

He was fine. He had found in Johnny something more than an outlet or a body to cling to in the hope that he might not drown. In Johnny he had found something warm, something safe. Hands to help him row the lifeboat when he felt the water closing in over his head. Johnny lit something bright in a part of him that had been dead for a long time.

But there was no escaping the bad days, and Johnny had his share as well. Those days when the city’s siren call was almost too much to resist, that winding barbed wire of desire that promised hot, wet flesh in alleyways and red corners, the scratch of cards against green felt tables. On nights like that they clung to each other a little harder and tried to keep each other afloat.

Tonight was a bad night on the heels of a truly awful day. It wasn’t even one thing in particular, just a series of bad clients and aggressive coworkers and a woman on the subway who had looked at him from under her lashes and smiled, and reminded him of the hunger that rose up every once in a while and howled in his ear until he thought he might implode.

When he got home he went right to the shower and ripped his suit from his body as quickly and efficiently as he could, turning the water as uncomfortably cold as he could stand. He rested his forehead against the tile and tried to breathe, waited until the relentless hammering in his head slowed and abated.

He thought he had gathered his scattered pieces by the time he reopened the door to the bathroom, a towel wrapped loosely around his hips, but Johnny was there in the hallway, leaning back against the wall with his arms folded across his chest. He looked at Brandon’s face for a moment, his eyes as sharp and unfathomable as always before he pushed off the wall and stepped into Brandon’s space. He rested his fingertips lightly against the sides of Brandon’s throat and pressed a kiss to his mouth, and Brandon wanted him in that instant as fiercely as he had in the beginning, reveling in the way Johnny drew his lower lip into his mouth, kissing him like Brandon was something delicious, and he couldn’t get enough.

And just as the ache rose up in him again, his fingers going to Johnny’s hips and clutching him too tight, his mouth pushing in too desperate, too wild, Johnny placed his palms gently against his chest, pressing him back and drawing away with one last kiss to the corner of his lips, short and sweet.

“I’m going to call in sick,” he said before drawing away and heading down the hall to the kitchen. Brandon opened his mouth to protest, but the bar would survive with Johnny for one night (and been doing without him more and more as Johnny played more gigs throughout the city with the new band), and he needed him more than they did anyways.

After Johnny had hung up the phone, he stripped out of the jeans that drove Brandon crazy and instead drove him crazy with his mouth and hands and eventually his entire body. He sat astride him and rode Brandon to completion, smiling down at him all the while, holding him tight between his thighs, keeping him steady with his palms pressed to his chest and drawing him back into himself. And when they were finished and sprawled next to each other in bed, Johnny put on a movie.

Brandon had been against putting a television in the bedroom, but Johnny had been unrelenting and eventually one had appeared there and stayed, just as all of Johnny’s antique leather furniture and vintage hats and jackets had wormed their way in amongst the austere, modern lines of Brandon’s apartment. Splashes of warmth in and around what was cold and barren. Brandon pretended it annoyed him, but always smiled when he pulled on his coat and found one of Johnny’s scarves balled up in the sleeve.

He’d also grown to love the television in the bedroom as well. When Johnny had moved in he had come with boxes labeled ‘LOVE’ in black permanent marker, and inside were stacks and stacks of DVDs. Brandon had never cared much for movies either way, but had never met someone who loved them as much as Johnny did. And not just any movies either. Old movies, grainy black and white classics with women in dark lipstick and perfect curls and men in fedoras, and desperate kisses as the music swelled. Johnny would watch pretty much anything from the era, but his absolute favourites were the musicals.

Brandon couldn’t see the appeal at first. It seemed ludicrous and impractical, that kind of naïve, romantic idealism. Brandon had never experienced that kind of lightness, that love in his life, and he scoffed at the songs and starry eyes, folded his arms and scowled at the screen when the hero inevitably swept his lady love off her feet and the credits rolled on their happily ever after.

But there had been one night when they’d been stranded in midtown after some pretentious loft party one of Brandon’s clients had hosted, unable to catch a cab despite Johnny launching himself into traffic in an attempt to flag one down. And just when Brandon was sure it couldn’t get worse, their buzz wearing off, footsore and exhausted, there had been a flash of light and a crack of thunder, and the sudden onslaught of pouring rain. They had been soaked in seconds. Brandon had swore loudly and ducked underneath a battered awning barely out of the downpour, but when he reached for Johnny and tried to pull him out of the rain, he was ignored.

Instead Johnny had removed his beat-up fedora and tipped his head back, laughing as the water rushed over his face and down his throat, as it streamed through his hair and darkened the shoulders of his jacket. Watching him pale and glistening in the middle of the deserted street, Brandon had been transfixed. Breathless.

And then Johnny had tipped his head forward again, had grinned at him and slicked his hair back, and proceeded to soft-shoe his way through a clumsy rendition of Gene Kelly’s  _Singin’ in the Rain_  number, loudly shouting the lyrics and leaping into puddles with a mighty splash, and Brandon was sure he has never seen anyone so carelessly, effortlessly beautiful. 

After that, he was more tolerant of Johnny’s musicals. 

_Singin’ in the Rain_  is what Johnny puts on as they lie curled beneath the pale blue sheets of Brandon’s bed. He hums the melody of “You are my Lucky Star” into the curve of Brandon’s collarbone, his voice buzzing over his skin, resonating down into his chest. The echo of it shakes the remaining poison of the day out of his body, and he settles deeper into the bed, pulling Johnny closer.

He might not understand the kind of love in Johnny’s favourite movies; love that surpasses all obstacles and overcomes the odds; that makes people sing to each other and dance in perfect unison. But Johnny believes in that kind of love. Believes in happy endings and that life can be beautiful, and people can love each other without pain and suffering.

Brandon might not believe in that, but he believes in Johnny. And on nights like this, maybe that’s enough. 

 

 

 


	3. A Hand in a Dark Room

  


It always takes him a moment to reorient himself in his own body after a session in Cerebro. While he’s inside the machine he is endless, non-corporeal, pure energy and thought expanding outwards into infinity.

Or, at least it feels that way. When the machine powers down there is always a split second of disconnect while he familiarizes himself with heavy, weighted flesh, with the idea of fingers and toes, tongue and teeth, and seeing the world through his eyes rather than through his mind.

He always feels a little off afterwards, and a little brain-sore, but some days are worse than others. He already knows that this day is going to be a bad day. With the way his stomach lurches when Hank removes Cerebro’s helmet and the room sways violently to the side when he takes a hesitant step forward, he thinks that this day in particular might be very,  _very_  bad.

He’s not entirely sure how he gets back to his room. He thinks Hank might have something to do with it, can remember vaguely the feel of long fingers wrapped around his elbow, the ceaseless hum of a voice running over changes in algorithms, adjustments in telemetry.

It is all he can do to remain upright when he sees his bed across the long concrete dorm the agency has allotted for his use. He shares the room with Erik, but Erik is nowhere to be found, and Charles is secretly grateful for it. He would hate for Erik to see him so weak, so useless, and Erik has made it clear how little he cares for Cerebro. He isn’t sure he could stand a lecture at the moment.

In fact, he doesn’t think he’s capable of standing, period. He collapses facedown on the mattress and allows his brain to tumble off into a dreamless sleep.

***

When he wakes up later the lights are on in the room, piercing and fluorescent, and he has just enough time to propel his body over to the edge of the mattress to vomit in the small plastic garbage can next to his bed.

His entire body aches and his head feels as though someone is driving metal spikes through his retinas into his brain. He continues to retch until there is nothing left in his stomach and his body is convulsing, curled in on itself.

He is aware, after an indefinite period of time, that the lights have been turned off, and someone is rubbing gentle circles into his back between his shoulder blades. While the migraine is painfully familiar, someone taking care of him is not, and his body flinches away involuntarily as much as the touch is welcome and soothing.

“Sorry,” he hears, and it’s Erik’s voice, and Erik’s particular mental essence and though his telepathy is raw and frayed, his mind is as comforting as his hands were. He wants to find the words to tell Erik his touch is always appreciated (and in his more pathetic moments, longed for and pined over), but he only has enough energy to slide his body back onto the mattress. He tries to uncurl his limbs, unclench his fists, but his body is still protective of the radiating pain and he only succeeds in whimpering pitifully, tremors running through his extremities like his nerve endings are loose and on fire.

“Easy Charles,” Erik again, and there are his beautiful hands again, carefully smoothing back Charles’ hair from his forehead, only to be replaced by a cool cloth. Charles would mourn the loss of his touch again, but the cloth feels wonderful against his skin, helping to recede the pain until Charles is capable of some clarity of thought. Able to open his eyes.

Erik is sitting on the edge of his bed. His face looks as calm and centered as it always does, but his thoughts are flavoured with concern.

“I’m alright,” Charles assures him. Erik quirks a passive eyebrow, and instead of pointing out the clear evidence that Charles is lying, says,

“Reading my thoughts Charles?” Charles winces and holds the cloth against his head as he struggles to sit up. Erik tisks and puts a gentle hand against his chest, pressing him back down to the mattress.

“I’m sorry,” Charles says, “It’s hard to control my shields when everything hurts like this.”

“You overdid it,” Erik replies, and his disapproval would be palpable, even without telepathy. Charles isn’t going to apologize because it’s his brain and he’ll give it a beating if he wants to, but he pulls on his most pathetic expression and tries not to smile when Erik rolls his eyes and huffs and exasperated sigh.

“Here,” he says, and hands Charles a couple of painkillers, helping him to sit up and swallow them with a glass of water. Charles drains the entire glass in an attempt to flush the taste of bile of his mouth, and though his stomach rebels momentarily he manages to keep it down.

Erik helps him ease back down to the bed and replaces the cloth on his forehead with another, his thoughts surprisingly tender.

“Thank you,” Charles says, swallowing around the sudden lump in his throat, “you don’t have to…” he’s not sure what he wants to say. Take care of him? Show him affection? Everything is muddled and confused, but luckily Erik says,

“It’s fine,” with such finality, Charles is able to choke down all of the remaining possible words and simply close his eyes.

He can hear Erik moving around, quiet and nearly soundless as always, and it’s comforting in a way that makes him feel painfully young. He can feel him channeling his intent and opens his eyes to see Erik hovering over his feet, a questioning look on his face.

“Oh yes,” Charles murmurs, “thank you,” and watches as Erik carefully unlaces his shoes and slides them off his feet, placing them neatly underneath the foot of the bed. When he straightens, he lingers there, one hand absently brushing against the blankets. There is something he is turning over again and again in his mind, Charles can tell from the strange tenor of his thoughts—the same distinctive churning impression he gets from most people when they are worrying incessantly over something.

Something clicks and Erik’s eyes flicker to him, decided.

“I think I can help, if you don’t mind…?” he asks, curiously hesitant, and when Charles says, “please,” he comes and sits by him, careful not to jostle Charles on the bed. Charles isn’t able to decipher exactly what his intention is, so when he takes Charles hand between his own, Charles is hard pressed not to gasp aloud.

Erik is very carefully not looking at Charles, and Charles is able to watch his face through lowered eyelashes, observe the focus and consideration he gives to Charles’ rather wide and unattractive palm. He begins to massage the meaty part of his hand, around his thumb, and into the cup of his palm, his slim, strong fingers digging in just right and it feels delicious.

It also feels uncomfortably intimate, and so Charles closes his eyes, concentrates instead on biting his lip against the indecent noises that threaten to slip from between his lips. Erik works his way over his hand and down his arm, and Charles had never realized how tense and sore his muscles were until Erik untangled them one by one. He finishes one arm and moves onto the other, and Charles drifts, unmoored though the pain still throbbing behind his eyes, his body slowly relaxing.

He’s not sure how much time has passed when Erik says his name quietly, as though testing if he is asleep. Charles grumbles, “don’t stop,” and Erik laughs and replies,

“Turn over then.”

Before he rolls over he wrestles his body into a sitting position and attempts to unbutton his shirt, but his fingers are numb and unfeeling, clumsy on the buttons. Erik laughs softly at him and bats his hands away, undoing his shirt button by button, as slowly and carefully as he had touched his body.

It’s then that Charles realizes how intimate the moment truly is, how close they are, Charles slumped forward so that he is nearly breathing in each exhaled breath from Erik’s mouth. He opens his eyes and catches Erik gazing intently at his face, and a sudden burst of though rings through him, loud and uncensored,

 _Beautiful_  and  _those eyes_  and  _I want him so much_

Charles can’t control his shock, his gasp of surprise, and there is a moment of disorientation as Charles feels Erik recognize that Charles overheard that particular, damning thought. His fingers freeze on the buttons of Charles’ shirt, and Charles knows he’s going to pull away, knows it before Erik makes his decision, and without thought or indecision sways forward and closes the gap between them.

Kisses Erik, as he’s been longing to since that first night in the water when he felt Erik’s mind and wrapped his arms around his body.

Erik leans into the kiss for brief moment before pulling back abruptly, leaving Charles’ mouth cold and wanting.

 “I’m sorry Charles,” he says, and he looks agonized and full of remorse, this mind firing in all directions, and for a moment Charles is overwhelmed.

“You shouldn’t have heard that,” Erik is saying when Charles comes back to himself, and he looks utterly dejected, but Charles is still tapped into his brain, and he can hear that Erik doesn’t regret the kiss (no, the kiss has lit up his mind like a wildfire) but rather the fact that he believes the thought pushed Charles into doing something against his will, which is ridiculous.

“That’s ridiculous,” Charles says, slicing straight through Erik’s mental diatribe of self-loathing. Charles gropes around for tact, for diplomacy, but finds nothing. His head still hurts so much.

He finishes struggling out of his shirt and lies back down on the bed, rolling onto his stomach.

“I’d kiss you again now if I wasn’t worried about throwing up on you,” is what he ends up saying. There is a pause and then Erik replies, a hint of smile in his voice,

“Charles, that’s disgusting.” Charles shrugs and burrows his face into his pillow.

“It’s true though. And as much as I’d like to kiss you, I’d much rather you continued on with the massage, thank you very much.”

He can feel Erik’s mind churning along, and then hesitant hands brush over his back, lingering along the knobs of his spine before digging in along his shoulder blades. Charles lets out a groan of satisfaction.

“You’re going to be impossible now, aren’t you?” Erik says, as dry and sardonic as always, but Charles can sense a gorgeous heat to his thoughts, and a tentative, hopeful sliver of happiness, of joy. He basks in it and allows Erik’s hands to uncoil the pain from his body before he slips into dreamless oblivion again.

  


  


(And just before he drifts off he decides that this day has not been so very bad after all.) 


	4. Erik Lensherr: Saviour of Lost Cats

 

Charles is flabbergasted. 

Charles isn’t sure he’s ever used the term “flabbergasted” before. He's never really had an approprate situation in which to use it. In fact, he is sure he hasn’t truly known what the word meant until this exact moment. 

“What?” Erik asks, somehow managing to retain a straight face and his stoic, classic dignity, even though he has to remove a tiny mewling fluff of orange fur from his forehead to look at Charles who is standing frozen in the doorway.

Charles doesn’t know where to begin. Maybe with the way Erik has removed all the antique furniture from the sitting room. Or that he's gathered every pillow within the mansion and stuffed the once austere and formal room full of them, wall to wall of goose down damask and beaded crochet.

Maybe with the fact that his effortlessly elegant and serious husband is currently sprawled bonelessly over the pillows, mindlessly creasing his perfectly pressed trousers, more relaxed than Charles has ever seen him outside of the blissful moments after Charles has wrung another delicious orgasm from his body.

It’s not that Charles hasn’t ever imagined Erik lounging decadently in a room full of pillows. In fact, that exact fantasy has been featured in many a glorious daydream, though he had always imagined Erik would be wearing significantly less clothing…and languidly eating a plate of fruit. Sexy fruit. Like grapes.

Instead, Erik’s entire body seems to be covered with tumbling, prancing, soft-pawed growling little monsters, the room resounding with the plaintive sound of their voices clamouring for attention. 

Kittens. Erik had somehow gotten a hold of seven—no, make that eight kittens.

Well. 

“Nothing,” Charles says as lightly as possible. “Did some redecorating while I was away?”

Erik scowls and mutters, “You were gone for a week,” as though that answers any of the questions currently bouncing around in Charles’ head. 

Erik stands, as effortlessly and fluidly as possible, and the kittens tumble down to the pillows, batting at each other, crawling up and leaping off the cushions as though they’re conquering mountains instead of ancient embroidery done by Charles Great-Great-Grandmother Bitsy. 

Erik swoops in close and kisses Charles, catching him off guard, digging his fingers into his hair and pulling him in. Charles fists his fingers into the loose material around Erik’s impossible waist and hauls him closer still, one week’s separation melting away in the embrace.

Erik draws back and rests his forehead against Charles’.

“Missed you,” he murmurs, and that’s when Charles realizes that he  _is_  answering the unspoken question. Charles isn’t sure whether he’s flattered that Erik missed him so much he allowed kittens to shed their white and ginger fur all over his favourite turtleneck, or whether he’s exasperated that his husband is such a silly sap.

Erik frowns at him like he heard that thought and stoops to scoop up the kitten that is slowly crawling up his pant leg. 

“This one’s name is Doctor Watson,” he says seriously as he hands the kitten over to Charles, who scrambles to hold it. The kitten blinks rather large blue eyes at him, and paws at his nose.

Charles, begrudgingly, feels his heart melt. He looks up at Erik who is crawling back into the pillows, careful to avoid kneeling on any wayward tails.

He never considered himself a _cat person_. Erik graces him with a smile and beckons to him, casually placing a tabby on his broad shoulder. He looks somehow softer, his hair falling over his forehead, the lines of his face lessened as he gazes up at Charles who is still awkwardly holding the kitten, his expression unspeakably fond. 

Well. Charles Xavier: cat-person. It has a nice ring to it. 

He looks down at the cat in his palm who has started to chew on his thumb. 

“Hello Doctor Watson,” he says, “I am also a Doctor, did you know? I think we’ll get along famously.” 

 


	5. Don't Go

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles is leaving. Erik asks him to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (inspired by this: http://tmblr.co/ZfXm6trY86CT)

Charles is late.

He was suppose to meet Erik two hours ago, but between his goodbye dinner with Raven and Moira and last minute packing, and the interminable delay on the subway he’s running into the park just as the sun is dipping below the tree line, his watch displaying his guilt with heavy black hands.

He shouldn’t be here. He should be in a cab heading for the airport. He wasn’t even going to come, and as much as the dinner and the packing and the unreliable transit are viable excuses, the real reason he’s so late is because he sat on the floor amidst all his boxes and bags and hesitated for a long painful hour, his forehead pressed to his drawn up knees, his fingers tangled in his own hair.

He went over all the reasons he shouldn’t go to the park to meet Erik; that it would be easier for them in the long run if it was a clean break; that Erik had shouted at him the last time he saw him, had said cruel, horrible things; that Erik didn’t support him, had refused to even talk about leaving the city with Charles.

In the end he listened to the last voicemail Erik had left him, the one where his voice was quiet and strained and so, so sad. When he had told Charles that he wanted to see him, and that he would be at their spot in the park. When he asked if Charles would meet him.

In the end it was Erik saying “Please, Charles.”

He has never been able to deny Erik a thing. Not really.

There are still people scattered here and there, stretched out on blankets and talking quietly, reading a book, throwing a stick for a golden, floppy eared dog, moving pieces around the immoveable stone chess boards where Erik and Charles had first met. He stops running, one hand clutched at his chest as he fights for air.

Erik isn’t there.

He turns in a slow circle and scans the area, but he’s sure of it. Erik isn’t there. Charles knows his mind, would be able to pick it out of a stadium full of people, Erik’s thoughts always resonating like the high pealing notes of a trumpet, loud and beautiful and blasting away into a clear blue sky.

Sick and defeated he slumps into a vacant wooden bench, his knees suddenly weak and protesting his sprint through the park. He thinks that maybe he should feel relieved that fate and circumstance and track maintenance on the subway line made his decision for him, but instead he feels a sharp twist of disappointment. He thinks about Erik waiting here for him, waiting and waiting and then eventually giving up. Leaving thinking Charles wasn’t coming. Slowly, an all-encompassing ache bleeds through his chest.

As his heart rate slows he realizes that the tightness in his throat, his lack of air isn’t because of the running. He hadn’t realized how much he wanted to see Erik once more before he left. And more than that, how much he wanted to give Erik the chance to talk him into staying. He thinks about his open suitcase, the unfolded sweaters scattered around his apartment, and thinks that maybe he wasn’t as prepared to leave as he thought.

He rakes his hands through his hair and tries to breathe. Slowly the sounds of the park filter in through the loud thump of his heart in his ears, a dog barking, someone laughing, the rattle of a tennis ball bouncing off the fence separating Charles from the court. When he looks up he sees a teenage girl in a too-clean tennis outfit swearing and collecting the missed volley. In front of her, inscribed in twisted metal on the chain link fence, there are words.

It is a message that can only be from Erik. Charles imagines him molding the metal with hands that would not shake or falter, words Erik must have thought Charles would never see.

_Please Don’t Go._

Charles sits and stares at the words until the last bit of light drains from the sky, until the lampposts in the park sputter to life, and the last person shakes out their blanket and heads for home, safe and secure in their unchangeable life, content. He stares at the words until his eyes are dry and his skin is cold beneath his button up shirt.

Please Don’t Go.

He’s missed his plane. He thinks he should be mad at Erik for that. Instead he sits for a while longer and looks at a silent plea in twisted metal and knows he’s going to stay.


	6. Family Business

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From trobador's prompt: 
> 
> Charles & Raven, BAMF siblings:
> 
> BAMF shapeshifter Raven Darkholme and her adopted baby brother, telepath Charles Xavier.
> 
> (http://black--betty.tumblr.com/post/51862088474/trobador-trobador-charles-raven-bamf)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This needs a bit of editing, but I'm just going to throw it up here for the time being....some day, when I'm not swamped in school work, I want to write a million more words of Raven being a complete badass.

The first time Erik met Raven Darkholme, she nearly killed him.

She was deceptively feminine sitting in the back corner of the squalid basement that served as the pre-arranged meeting place, despite the fact that she was disassembling a semi-automatic handgun with liquid ease. In low-slung jeans and a tight black camisole, she was radiating sorority pedigree: waves of blond hair and an impressive rack, eye lash extensions and long limbs that were evenly bronzed in a way that spoke of florescent tanning beds rather than natural sunlight.

He had written her off immediately, though Erik knew better than anyone that looks could be deceiving.

That was his first mistake.

He had directed his attention instead to the imposing figure of a man he only knew as Logan, his contact, his grip tight and uncompromising when Erik introduced himself. The rest of the rag-tag group seemed young and foolish, a heavy lidded boy with red hair who seemed ready to doze off, another young woman in a leather jacket, fixing her lipstick in a compact mirror, a man lounging with his feet up on the beat-up table, his face in shadow, hands lazily shuffling a worn deck of cards.

Logan had brought Erik in ostensibly as an expert in mechanics, someone with the requisite skills to help them break into Shaw’s compound and get their greedy little paws on whatever pile of riches he had stashed away there. They didn’t need to know that Erik had other plans. That he had been looking for a way to get at Shaw for years, and had finally found a group of people with the supposed skills to distract Shaw’s cronies for long enough to get his hands around Shaw’s throat.

“What about the telepath?” he asked. Emma Frost had been a source of consistent aggravation for Erik, an impenetrable, sneering roadblock that had swatted Erik away like a pestering fly when he had managed, once, to get close to Shaw.

There was a moment of palpable discomfort in the room, a strange weight that settled over them as their eyes connected and then flickered away from each other. He had the sudden realization that they had discussed this before, and that it was a problem. Dammit.

“I’m pretty good when it comes to telepathy,” Logan said around his cigar, tapping his forehead, “but that ain’t going to help the rest of you.”

The man with the cards cleared his throat and fanned the deck from hand to hand with a satisfying, controlled snap before speaking up, his accent curling around the words in a blithe way that spoke of a conversation had many times before,

“There is always darling Charles…”

Raven didn’t even look up from where she was cleaning her gun, only bit out a terse,

“No.”

Erik had felt a wave of frustration rise up in his chest, and he tried to bite it back down, not wanting to make enemies of anyone right off the bat. But years of working on his own had made his patience with the stubbornness and stupidity of other people almost non-existent and his desperation to finally catch-up with Shaw, who had been nothing but slippery grains of sand between his fingers, pushed him ever closer to the final edge of decency. Still, he tried to smother this rising tide of rage in his voice when he tried again,

“If there’s a way around Frost, we need to use it. Otherwise this whole thing is pointless—“

Raven replaced the grip on her gun with a snap,

“We’re not using Charles.”

His hands clenched into fists so quick, his fingers cracked audibly. And then he made his second mistake.

“Listen, sweetheart, I don’t care if you don’t want your precious boyfriend or whatever getting involved. If you think we can do this without taking Frost out, than you must be stupider than you look—“

He hit the floor so hard his brain rattled within his skull. One moment Raven was sitting on the other end of the room, the next her foot was catching him under his jaw, lifting him off his feet with a strength and force that was unnatural and awe-inspiring, and slamming him down into the ground, her heavy black boot planted squarely over his throat, pinning him in place.

“First of all,” she spat down at him, eyes on fire, blond hair a wild halo around her furious face, “he’s my little brother and you’re  _not touching him_.” The pressure on his throat increased and he reached out with his hands, with his powers, trying to shove her off, but he couldn’t move her an inch. Finally he nodded, and she eased up, allowing him room to breathe.

“Secondly, I’m not your  _sweetheart_ , and you don’t know a damn thing about how I look—“ and he watched in amazement as the boots, the tight jeans and blond waves melted away into miles of naked blue skin, gloriously scaled, and a red shock of hair and her dull brown eyes became golden, though unchanging in their distain.

As she released him and roughly tapped his face with her bare foot before returning to her corner, he thought that if he wasn’t dedicated to driving a blunt object through Sebastian Shaw’s head, he might have finally found a woman to worship for the rest of his life.

The meeting spun on with an annoyed grunt from Logan, and as he watched her reassemble her gun in a rapid series of competent movements, her body unabashedly blue and nude, her teeth white and sharp and sneering in his direction, he thought just might go ahead and prostrate himself at her feet regardless.

At least, that was the plan until one week later when he walked into the ramshackle bar that had become their meeting place and spotted a tousled haired young man downing a shot of whiskey and grinning at Logan as he plied him for another. Until the boy directed his electric gaze toward Erik, turned the full wattage of his smile in his direction, and Erik forgot what breathing was, thought his heart might explode. Until Raven tapped Erik on the shoulder as he attempted to charm this same young man in the rumpled sweater who was very possibly the love of his life, and swiftly punched him in the face, knocking him off his stool and into unconsciousness. 

He came to with the young man leaning over him, a concerned look in his blue, blue eyes, a towel full of ice in his hands,

“I take it you’ve met my sister?”

Erik groaned and covered his face,

“You must be Charles.”

He had a feeling that suddenly, Sebastian Shaw was the very least of his troubles. 

 


	7. Masquerade

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From this prompt at the kink meme:
> 
> Erik, a long time admirer and acquaintance of Charles, goes to a masquerade ball with no expectations of having fun. But when he sees Charles (How could he not recognize Charles, what with those amazing eyes and lips?) standing idly by the punch bowl, he isn't able to resist one night of romantic fantasy. He dances with Charles all night and as the night comes to an end, he leaves without revealing his identity.
> 
> http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/5215.html?thread=5185631#t5185631

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe I wrote this nearly 2 years ago! Crazy! This also needs some editing...and also will hopefully have more added to it...eventually. At some point.

 

> _Man is least himself when he talks in his own person._
> 
> _Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth_
> 
> ~ Oscar Wilde 

 

Halloween was something Erik typically thought of as a ‘human’ custom, and consequently something he rejected with considerable distain. And yet, somehow he finds himself standing at the top of the Grand Staircase in the Imperial Ballroom in Genosha, at what can only be termed a Halloween Masquerade Ball.   
  
Frowning, he tugs at the sleeves of his brocaded jacket. He had tried, adamantly, to stop this event from taking place, and when that failed, to stay at home, but it had been firmly suggested by the council that Erik’s presence was a necessity, would inspire confidence and project an image of prosperity and joy that the mutant cause so rarely had time to indulge in.  
  
So here he is, naked without his cape and helmet even under his elaborate mask and swirling coattails and leather boots. His mental shields are levered up like high walls of fortified steel, and yet he still feels the gentle prickling of ice just at the edge, Emma Frost announcing her presence without words. He glances over at her, unmistakable in her white lace and silk, her blond hair curling with swan feathers and woven diamonds. She smirks at him and gestures at the stairs with a nod of her head. The message ‘Get to it,’ loud and clear.  
  
He heaves the sigh of the greatly oppressed and winds his way down the staircase and into the crush of mutants surrounding the dance floor. Though he begrudgingly attends these society events, he still feels a surge of pride at the sight of a large group of his people gathered together in one place, and relishes in his ability to move through them unnoticed for a while, disguised from their looks of fear, or honour, or praise. Some of them are more recognizable then others even with their masks, Storm’s hair floating by him like a cloud, Azazel’s red skin and flickering tail, Hank McCoy’s fur tufting above his shirt collar, and around the edges of his mask.  
  
McCoy is leaning down and talking to a young couple with great intensity. The woman, who looks bored at the conversation but awestruck by the majesty of the vaulted, frescoed ceilings above her, is breathtaking in her beauty. She instantly stands out, foregoing the ridiculous costumes the rest of them had been forced into by Frost and her committee of Fascist party planners, her skin bare, utterly blue and ridged in scales. She only thing she is wearing is an elaborate mask made of peacock feathers, the blue matching her skin precisely, and she is otherworldly, and perfect.  
  
The man next to her is, at first glance, plain in comparison, and far more interested in what McCoy is saying then any one person could ever honestly be. Erik moves closer, and as Hank shifts so he can see the man more clearly, he stops in his tracks. He might not have blue scales or yellow eyes, but plain this man is not. He finds himself looking at the blue eyes and soft brown hair, and full red mouth of one Professor Charles Xavier. 

He looks at the woman next to Xavier again and smiles. So this must be ‘Raven’ as Xavier calls her, or Mystique as she is known amongst Erik’s staff, a shapeshifter and important spy within the human government on the mainland, an upcoming hero of the mutant resistance who Erik has never had the pleasure of meeting in person before.   
  
Charles Xavier he has met numerous times, in Congress and in important Senate meetings, at public rallies and Genetic conferences at the University. Professor Xavier is someone he has clashed verbally with time and time again in public and in private, someone who the general populace thinks has inspired the ire of the great Magneto.

He is in reality someone Erik admires greatly, someone he respects, and someone he is passingly attracted to.  
  
He looks Charles over, his face free and clear of the mask dangling uselessly in his fingers as he gestures to emphasize a point, takes in the elegant cut of his jacket tapering in at his waist, the smooth curl of his cravat at his throat, neatly the same blue as his eyes, the long line of his legs in creamy breeches.  
  
So maybe he is more then passingly attracted to Charles Xavier.   
  
He feels himself freeze when he realizes the nature of the thoughts suddenly rushing through his head, lusty and aching and coloured in a lucious red. Remembers another thing that attracts him to Xavier: the incredible and immense power of his telepathy, making this innocuous man one of the most powerful mutants in the room, and also fully capable of sussing out Erik’s true, lecherous, mindset.  
  
He feels suddenly vulnerable, and exposed, and shrinks backwards, preparing to flee. He’s jostled forward at the last minute by the Summer’s brothers, poking and laughing at each other’s costumes, and as he turns to yell at them, he can hear Charles’ posh, accented voice saying,  
  
“Oh no, I’m purposefully saying out of everyone's heads tonight-- It takes somewhat of the mystery out of a masquerade if I know who everyone is, doesn’t it?”   
  
He pauses. Charles is nothing if not steadfast and true to his word. If Charles is truly not reading anyone’s mind tonight…he turns back slowly and looks at him again. Charles is laughing at something Mystique is saying to Hank, who is blushing a deep purple down to the very roots of his fur.  
  
Maybe this is his chance, just for one night, to get close to Charles, to be with him the way he’s always longed to be, but couldn’t with the imposing structure of Magneto always standing in his way.  
  
He makes up his mind in an instant, and before he allows himself to change his decision, strides forward to the group clustered together by the long table piled high with sweets in the shape of flowers and tart pink punch in golden cups. 

“Professor Xavier.” He says, his voice low and smooth in the man’s ear. Charles startles, and turns, and Erik thrills at the way his eyes catch on his chest and slowly drag up to meet his gaze. “Would you care to dance?”  
  
Charles gapes at him for a moment, and then looks at Mystique who shrugs and links her arm through McCoy’s.  
  
“Go for it Charles. Hank was going to dance with me anyways.” McCoy sputters and looks terrified, but Charles is grinning when he turns back to Erik, and he says,  
  
“Splendid. I'd love to,” before taking Erik’s offered arm and following him out onto the dance floor.   
  
Already there is a crowd of couples moving slowly to the soft strains of music coming from a dais in the center of the floor, their dresses and masks and coloured skin and hair turning them into embers and glittering jewels under the low lamp light of the crystal chandeliers hanging high above them. They spin in intricate circles that seem to have no purpose or plan, fireflies flickering through the shadows of the room, fragile and ephemeral.  
  
Erik takes Charles’ hand and pulls him close, winding his other arm behind the small of his back and flattening his palm against the soft curve there. Charles places his other hand on Erik’s shoulder, but when Erik tugs him closer, his hand slides up to the nape of his neck. When he reflexively winds his fingers into Erik’s hair, Erik takes a moment to breathe and repress a shiver of delight.  
  
Up close Charles’ eyes are larger and more vivid, reflecting the light back at Erik like hundreds of candles floating on the ocean. When Erik spins them into movement, his lips part and a soft, “Oh…” escapes him, and his stumble gives Erik the excuse to pull him closer still.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Charles says, his face flushing slightly as he looks down at his feet, trying to pick up the rhythm of the dance, “I’m not a very good dancer.”  
  
“Look at me.” Erik asks, squeezing his hand. Charles looks up at him again, his beautiful eyes widening a little more. “Keep looking at me—just follow my lead.”  
  
He takes them in a slow turn around the floor, remembering in a flash of pain his mother holding his hands, teaching him to dance on the cold wooden floor of a kitchen in Poland when he was eleven, her hands rough from the dishwater, her eyes soft as she sang along with the radio straining from the apartment above them.  
  
He holds Charles a little closer as the memory washes over him, and when he asks “everything alright?”, genuinely concerned, Erik can only shake his head and press his face into the soft waves of Charles’ hair, allowing the clean, soapy smell of him to calm his heart.

They dance together again and again, ceaselessly, tirelessly, until Erik no longer knows how long they’ve been out on the dance floor. He only knows how good Charles feels, his body warm and close, and that he hasn’t felt so free, so unfettered in a long time.  
  
Glancing up, he can see Emma at the top of the stairs again, scanning the room for him. He knows he is suppose to give a speech at midnight, announcing his presence, congratulating them all on the successful evening, preaching mutant solidarity and so on, and all at once he wants to leave.   
  
He looks down at Charles who is smiling up at him, something coy and hopeful in the curve of his mouth, and he doesn’t want to let him go. He doesn’t want to see the look of shock on Charles’ face, on everyone’s face when they all realize he’s the one who has been dancing like a fool with someone he is suppose to hate for the duration of the evening. In this perfect moment, he doesn't want Magneto to return.  
  
He pulls back abruptly. Charles stumbles slightly, and looks up at him in confusion. He grasps Charles’ hand, linking their fingers together and says,  
  
“Come with me,” before tugging Charles off the dance floor. They wind their way through the crowd, and Erik holds on tight to his hand, worried that at any moment those fingers will slip away and he’ll be left holding onto the wisps of a beautiful dream.   
  
They make it all the way to the edge of the ballroom, where Erik knows there is a small, inconspicuous doorway that leads off into a dark corridor and eventually out into the grounds surrounding the palace. The door should be locked, but Erik opens it effortlessly, hoping Charles will think the door was meant to be open, will not recognize his power, the one thing sure to give him away.   
  
The door shuts behind them, and they are thrown into darkness. Erik lets go of Charles’ hand and reaches forward in the pitch black. His hands find the sides of Charles’ face and he pulls him forward with a small, desperate sound, and kisses him.  
  
Charles opens to him right away, curling his hands into his lapels and shoving him backwards against the wall. His mouth is as wet and warm as Erik always dreamed it would be, his full bottom lip sliding across Erik’s mouth as he nips at Erik’s top lip and then slides his tongue back inside when Erik gasps.   
  
Erik winds one of his hands in the hair curling at Charles’ neck and tilts his head the way he wants it, the other hand sliding down to the curve of his ass and hauling him closer. Charles’ rolls deliciously against him, moaning into his mouth as their bodies come into closer contact and the friction builds between them.  
  
Charles is panting gorgeously against his mouth as Erik slides a hand between them, rubbing slowly at his cock as it strains against the material of his breeches. He tilts Charles’ head back using the hand still tangled in his hair and sucks a kiss into the soft underside of his chin, right at the sharp notch of his jaw. Charles releases a little moan that Erik wants to force out of him again and again, and his hands are trembling where they’re clutching at his clothes. 

He’s just about to see about unlacing the ridiculous pants of Charles’ costume when a sharp knife of ice digs into his skull. He cries out in pain and pushes Charles away, bends over at the waist, one hand at his temple. Distantly, he can hear Charles asking in a panic if he’s alright, but in the forefront of his mind the cool, frigid voice of Emma Frost demands,  
  
“Where the hell are you—it’s two minutes until midnight. If you went back to your room, I will lobotomize you—“  
  
“I’M COMING,” he hollers back in his head, and the pain recedes slightly. He straightens, wavering slightly on his feet, still shaking from the residual sting in his mind, and the lustful ache in the rest of his body. Charles hesitantly puts a hand on his arm.  
  
“Are you alright?”

He nods, and then remembering that Charles can’t see him, he says,  
  
“Yes, I’m fine,” and then, after a painful hesitation, “I have to go, I’m sorry…”

There is a pause, and then Charles removes his hand.  
  
“Oh…okay.” He sounds confused, and maybe a little hurt and so Erik reaches for him again in the darkness and scoops him close and kisses him breathless.  
  
“It’s not you—I wish I could stay here with you, but I really do have to go.” He kisses him again, and makes it slow, and lingering, knowing that this will most likely be the last time he gets to do this. When he’s done he trails his thumbs along Charles’ cheekbones softly. He wishes he could see him now, thoroughly debauched and kiss stung and flushed, but he thinks maybe it’s for the best that he can’t. He would never be able to look at him the same way again, and after tonight, after this very moment, he’s going to have to go back to being Magneto, and Magneto hates Professor Xavier. It’s a well known fact.  
  
Charles reaches up and grasps his hands. He pulls them away from his face, but squeezes them affectionately before releasing them.  
  
“Go,” he says, and there is a laugh in his voice and it is the push Erik needs to head for the door.   
  
Right before he opens it, he lifts a hand to his mask making sure it’s on straight, smooths down his jacket, wrinkled from Charles’ fingers. When he puts his hand on the doorknob, Charles asks,  
  
“Wait—what’s your name?” He pauses, and then opens the door. The light and chatter of the party washes over him, overwhelming and deafening for a moment, and he almost can’t hear his own voice when he answers,  
  
“It’s Erik.”

He strides out into the ballroom and doesn't look back.


	8. The Boy Under Brass Lampshades

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the kink meme prompt:
> 
> Charles is a guy Erik notices in the pub. One night, he sees someone drinking with Charles and clearly getting him drunk faster than he would on his own. Erik tells himself that it isn't his business, but when he sees the other person dragging Charles away, he finally decides to go after them. He arrives just in time to save an already half stripped Charles, give the other person a proper punishment, and then takes a drunk-senseless Charles home, taking care of him gently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another unfinished fill I unearthed...and will hopefully continue some day!
> 
> WARNINGS FOR: attempted non-con

 

He’s seen him around.   
  
Never on campu--at the gym, or the library, or any other popular social Mecca in the neighborhood—he’s seen him here, at the pub with the faded name above the door. The pub with cheap drinks on Saturday and brass lampshades that hang too low, pool tables with torn felt and beer stains on the floor.   
  
When he sees him, if he sees him, he always seems to shine a bit brighter then the alcohol soaked atmosphere of the pub. Soft hair and blue eyes and a smile that lights up the room, clothes a little too old for his body, a little too posh for the beat up barstool he leans against.   
  
Erik has seen him around, and when he sees him he always finds his eye drawn to him, inescapably. Not in a creepy, “I’m watching your every move” kind of way, but more of a ‘wow, that person is attractive’ way, or an ‘I will never have that’ kind of way. Erik sits alone, waits for his friends, and inevitably finds his gaze wrenched back to him as he flits from one group of people to another, as he flirts and smiles and touches as effortlessly as breathing, as people trail in his wake, drawn as moths to a flame.  
  
Sometimes Erik wishes he could flutter after them.  
  
He knows his name is Charles, hears it when he walks in the door, when people call out to him from all corners of the tiny pub, beckoning him over, holding out their arms, offering him a drink. _Charles_ , embraced by everyone, a shy blush coloring his cheeks.  
  
He’s here now, the gorgeous boy with all the friends, with his awful out of date trousers and his beautiful smile. Erik, as always, watches him subtly from down the bar, watches as he turns the charm on a mediocre looking man who buys him a drink. Erik wonders for a moment what this hulking, average looking frat boy has that Erik doesn’t have, wonders what Charles would do if Erik slid onto the stool next to him, if it was Erik buying him the drink.  
  
He can’t even visualize the outcome, experience and cold cynicism painting a conclusion full of heartache and embarrassment. Erik would rather remain a stranger to him then suffer the humiliation of rejection.  
  
Erik’s friends arrive, and his attention is momentarily drawn away. When he looks back later (minutes later? Hours?) Charles is more drunk then Erik has ever seen him, his head resting in the curl of his elbow on the bar, his smile hazy, his eyes unfocused as he looks up at the strangely sober frat boy from before, who holds out another shot.  
  
Erik watches as he shakes his head slowly as if it weighs a great deal, watches as the frat boy cajoles, and then pressures, until finally Charles pushes himself upright, takes the shot with a shaking hand and pours it down his throat, gold liquor spilling out the corners of his mouth and dribbling down his chin, painting polka dots across the starched collar of his white button up shirt.   
  
Erik watches as the frat boy drags a possessive hand down the curl of Charles’ spine has he hunches down over the bar again. Watches as frat boy leans in and whispers something into Charles’ ear, catching the lobe between his teeth before he pulls back. Erik watches as Charles tries to back away, but wavers on the stool, watches as the frat boy reaches out to steady him, but keeps his hands around his waist, clutching Charles close as he stands him up, as he loops Charles’s arm around his neck and all but drags him from the bar.  
  
It’s not any of his business what Charles does. More then once he’s seen him leave with a pretty girl or boy latched onto his wrist, and while it leaves a curls of something cold and unidentifiable in his stomach, what Charles does is truly none of his business.   
  
But something sits wrong in his stomach this time, something rotten and perverse and it encourages Erik to stand up from his table, to tell his friends he is heading home early. He pulls on his jacket, and for the first time since he laid eyes on Charles, Erik is the one to follow after him, all of Charles’ many friends lost to drink and slow grinding on the makeshift dance floor by the beaten-down jukebox.

Outside it has started to rain. Not heavily, just a soft fall of mist settling down to the ground, clinging to his skin, making the pavement slick, raising the smell of damp garbage into the air. Erik scans the parking lot, the rows and rows of cars shining wetly under the street lamps, but sees no sign of movement.   
  
Except there. At the back of the lot there is a rusted fence that separates the cars from the abandoned gas station next door, and Erik can see what looks like frat boy’s head hovering above a car there, far away from the pub, far enough away from the street lights that he is cast in shadow.   
  
Without thinking Erik starts walking, though it is the opposite direction from his tiny one bedroom apartment three blocks away. He could be merely walking to his car for all they know, and he rolls the cover story around in his mouth until it tastes like truth. The dread that had been curdling in his stomach intensifies with every step, but it’s groundless, and he tries to swallow it down.  
  
When he reaches the final line of cars, he hears something that sounds like a muffled protest, and that same dread leaps into his throat, quickens his steps until he standing at the car, a massive slate grey monstrosity, where he thought he had seen frat boy.  
  
The back door is hanging open, and Erik steps up quietly, stretches out and peers in through the window. He has enough time to absorb the scene in flashes: Charles, his head propped at an awkward angle against the other passenger door, his cardigan a sad ball of blue wool on the floor, his crisp shirt rumpled and unbuttoned and hanging off the sides of his body. Charles, mumbling and responsive enough to loll his head away as frat boy pushes forward to bite at his mouth, to claw weakly at hands that pull violently at the button on his pants, at the palm that rubs roughly down on his crouch. Charles who is saying, almost inaudibly, ‘No. No—“  
  
It’s the sound of that voice, pleading and scared, that spurs Erik into action, and he moves before his brain can even comprehend what’s going on, or catch up with his hands as they wrench the door open all the way, as they latch onto the neck and shoulder of the man in front of him who’s become nothing more then a white mass of repulsive flesh.  
  
It’s not until he has the guy thrown up against the car parked next to them, one hand fisted in his shirt, one forearm against his throat pushing and pushing him backwards, that he even registers the guy saying anything at all. But he is speaking, and now Erik can make out the string of confused and angry expletives that are pouring from his mouth,  
  
“What the fuck man?! What the fuck is your problem!?” Erik pulls him forward and slams him back down again, relishing the sound of his head bouncing off the hood of the car with a resounding crack.

“He’s saying no, you fuck.” And he barely recognizes his own voice, low and level and completely terrifying. The guy registers the threat before stupidity barrels over, and he shoves at Erik’s chest.  
  
“Fuck you, asshole! If he wanted it an hour ago, he wants it now—“ he pushes and pushes at Erik’s body, but Erik is unrelenting, rage pumping through him, his arms locked into place. “He would’ve sucked my dick in the bar if I told him to, the little slut—“  
  
And then the frat boy is on the ground, rolling into the wet gravel, clutching at his nose and howling, rivulets of blood pouring through his fingers. Erik is aware that his fist hurts, the pain throbbing through his fingers a distant echo. He wants to kick and kick at the man at his feet until he stops making noise, but something stops him, a small sound from behind him, barely perceptible above the groaning and swearing.   
  
He turns to see Charles struggling to sit up, weak fingers grasping clumsily at the upholstery of the car seat. He says something, but his words are completely slurred together, incomprehensible, and he can only slump against the seat, his large blue eyes fluttering shut.   
  
Erik feels something inside his chest melt, the anger dissipating, breaking apart like fog under the heat of the sun. He crouches down next to the open car door, asks softly if there is someone he can get for Charles, or if he can get him home, but Charles shakes his head, rubbing his face sleepily against the back of the seat, and can only mutter,

“Tired. I’m tired.”   
  
So Erik makes a decision. He grasps Charles’ forearms as gently as he can and draws him out of the car. Once he gets him on his shaky feet he wraps a tentative arm around his waist. He wavers for a moment, trying to decide if he should head back inside, try and find one of Charles’ many friends, and then decides against it. They didn’t care enough to watch over Charles before, when he was sliding off his stool and choking down an unwanted drink, when he was saying 'no' to deaf ears. Why would they watch over him now?   
  
Charles inevitably makes the decision for both of them by passing out, and Erik scoops him up, stepping over the frat boy who is prodding at his broken nose and saying disparaging things about Erik, and Erik’s mother and Charles, but it all seems so distant with the warm weight in his arms, the curl of Charles’ hair under his chin, and the hot puff of breath against his collarbone. 


	9. Library Hours: Open Through the Apocalypse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In response to this post: http://black--betty.tumblr.com/post/58504339565/keire-ke-lokiismycopilot)   
> and keire-ke's prompt on tumblr :
> 
> On that note, can we have a post-apocalyptic XMFC in which Charles has a biblioburro and goes round the place with his books and teaches and there’s that one village he’s a little afraid of visiting, that has the scariest, meanest blacksmith ever, who loves any and all books and growls when people who are before him in line (which happens practically never) pick a book he wanted to read.

 

Charles stood at the side of the road amidst the skeletal corpses of rusted out cars, and kicked angrily at the crumbling asphalt that was to blame for all his problems. He looked at Sancho Panza and said

"This is absurd."

Sancho Panza, as always, blinked large brown eyes at him and said nothing in return.

Charles sighed and raked his hands through his hair, dusty and tangled after two days of travel, looked around at the burnt wasteland on one side of the road and the beaten down path through the forest on the other.

"I’m not going back there so soon. I don’t care if he’s the last blacksmith on earth."

Sancho Panza clicked his teeth in the way he always did when Charles was being especially ridiculous. Or when he was hungry.

"I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I like him. That ‘the lady doth protest too much’ but you’re wrong."

So what if Erik had all of his teeth, and beautiful long legs, and shoulders that were broad and muscled from hammering out metal all day. So what if he was the first in line every time Charles and Sancho appeared laden with all their books, possible the only surviving books in the whole wide world, and always chose one of Charles’ favourites to read.

"He’s rude. He growls at people when they cut in front of him in the queue. There’s a queue for a reason Sancho. Just because it’s the end of the world, doesn’t mean we have to be uncivilized."

Sancho blinked at him, and then slowly, gingerly tapped one hoof on the asphalt. Charles looked down, looked at the metal shoe that at gotten caught in the cracked and broken road, and twisted. Looked at the way Sancho was shifting all of his weight and the mountain of books piled on his back, to alleviate pressure.

Charles sighed again and rubbed his hand over the velvety fur of Sancho’s nose. After a moment he straightened his scarf and his tattered sweater as best he could and gently began to maneuver their way off the road, picking each step slowly and carefully.

"Alright darling. Let’s go see the blacksmith." 

 


	10. Incidental Music

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written for rumcity, who posting this prompt at the kink meme:
> 
> Based on this picture http://24.media.tumblr.com/9585a942d41ac5c5a2ba84b4cb89016b/tumblr_mp0w1hg56f1rjt3tjo1_500.jpg
> 
> Violinist!Charles and perhaps Poet or Musician!Erik meeting at a protest or rally during Beat Generation era? :F (It was my first thought upon seeing this picture but seriously, run with it however you want! Don't want to pigeonhole anyone!) It doesnt even have to specifically be beat generation :) Just Violinist!Charles please!
> 
> (I travelled pretty far away from the original prompt....still, rummy, this one is for you :D)

 

It’s easy to walk by—he does it all the time. Erik is a busy man and the people busking in the subway stations, or on the street, or in the park, they become whitewashed into the background of his every day commute. They are a faceless entity, a faded and scratched soundtrack that slips in and out of his consciousness as he thinks about the case he needs to file with the Supreme Court. As he worries about the judge with the bias against mutants who is sitting on the bench in the morning, or his client who sat in his office with a broken collar bone and sobbed into her beautiful webbed fingers, lamenting that she was different.  
  
He will toss spare change into a weathered guitar case, or a worn felt hat when he has the presence of mind to do it, but mostly he keeps his eyes directed out in front, his feet moving forward and his mind on other things.  
  
Tonight though. Tonight something makes him stop. The moment he gets out of the subway car he can hear the music echoing down the tile corridor towards him, rising and falling in tune with the whine of florescent lights. As he rounds the corner toward the turnstiles and the stairs beyond leading up to the street, the music grows louder, a haunting, wailing melody that seems to hook into his chest and pull. It’s uncomfortable.   
  
He grips his briefcase handle a little tighter and prepares to move past the busker, but as he passes through the comforting metal of the turnstiles, he catches a glimpse of him and stops.  
  
And stares.  
  
And listens.   
  
It’s a young man with a violin tucked under his chin, bending and swaying with each broad stroke of his bow arm. He’s wearing a beaten up leather jacket as protection against the frigid cold that blows in from the street, the elegant fingers peeking out of fingerless gloves still nimble on the strings despite the weather.  
  
There is brown hair curling over his forehead, falling into eyes that are shut tight, the black sweep of his eyelashes wet with an emotion that Erik can feel echoed in his own heart. He read once that the violin is the instrument whose music is closest to the sound of a human voice, and he can hear that now, the plaintive sound of a voice crying out in the dark. It is beautiful, just as the boy is undeniably beautiful, the two of them, the boy and his violin moving together in perfect synchronicity, pouring out pain and yearning and a high wail of helpless longing.  
  
Erik is standing motionless amidst a tidal wave of evening commuters and he can’t move, can’t understand how anyone can walk past this boy as he spells out all the beautiful, mourning pieces of the world with wood and string and a sweep of his hand.   
  
The music ends with a long slow note, low and reverberating down to the soles of Erik’s feet. The boy takes a long breath and then lowers the violin from his chin, opens eyes that are wide and blue and clear and looks directly at Erik. The shock of it jars Erik into motion and he fumbles at his pockets unable to look away, pulls out a handful of change.  
  
The boy shakes his head and says,  
  
"For you, that one was free," and when he smiles, Erik feels like he can see the future. He imagines what life might be like with music in the morning with the rising sun, the feeling of strong fingers folded into his own hand. Imagines blue eyes looking at him from over the soft swell of a pillow, and strings being tightened and plucked in the dark under moonlight and stars.  
  
It’s a foolish, naive fantasy, but as the boy breathes out slowly and lifts the violin to his chin again, pulls music out of the air like coloured drops of condensation settling on the petals of a flower, as Erik moves closer to him and instead of money, leaves his business card on the worn red velvet of the open violin case, he thinks that maybe it’s less fantasy, and more…hope.

 


	11. The morning after...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by this gif on tumblr:
> 
> http://black--betty.tumblr.com/post/59853396200/the-closer-the-due-date-for-this-essay-the-more-i-feel
> 
> essentially, this is Charles waking up after a solid night of drinking to more than he bargained for....

 

Charles woke to sunlight streaming hot across his face, bleeding painfully into his eyes and marinating his brain in a slow broil. Very possibly, something had died in his mouth. He remained motionless for a minute and tried to determine whether his internal organs would rebel and reveal themselves on the crumpled bedspread. His ankle throbbed mysteriously. His wrists were bruised with the distinct impression of long fingers.

As always, he swore never to drink again.

He couldn’t remember a single moment of the previous night. At least, not anything after Raven had lit a line of shots on fire at the bar and derided his manhood with cruel mocking words until he had picked the first one up and poured it down his throat.

He tried shifting, groaned when every muscle in his body protested. There was a glass of water on the nightstand stationed next to two white tablets, and he took a moment to congratulate himself on his foresight. Swallowing them down made him feel slightly more human, though he spilled half of the water clumsily down his chest and onto his pillow.

Having to crawl to the bathroom made him feel decidedly less than human.

The hot water of the shower brought pieces of the night back to him in bright flashes of colour. He could remember the street soaked in rain. Dancing on the roof of a taxicab. Trying to pet a squirrel with varying degrees of success.

Remembered one club with rainbow coloured lights and a pounding bass line that shook him to his core. Remembered hands on his bare waist and a voice in his ear that growled below the music, words working their way into his chest, hooking into him until he ached. Raven laughing and tucking a condom into his pocket before disappearing into the night.

Rubbing a cursory towel over his hair and across his body he slid on a pair of boxers and stumbled down the hall toward the kitchen, distracted with thoughts of tea and something dripping with grease.

All thoughts of breakfast fled his mind when he arrived in the cramped kitchen, agonizingly awash in bright morning sunlight.

There was a man in rummaging through his cupboards.

Charles probably should have been more concerned, but his brain was barely awake and the part of him that should have sparked in self-preservation, in fight or flight, was taken over by the part of him that snagged on broad shoulders tapering to a slim hips, and tight jeans barely hanging onto a perfect curve of bare ass. Was slightly distracted by the way the light spilled over warm bare skin and red gold hair, the way the muscles in the man’s arm flexed as he reached on his toes to the top shelf for a mug as though he had been living in Charles’ run down apartment for years.

Glancing back over his shoulder, the man did a double take.

“Oh, you’re….oh,” he lowered his arm and turned, eyes following the drip of water from Charles’ hair down his chest. He leaned back against the counter and grinned, his smile sharp and full of teeth.

“Good morning,” he said when he had finally looked his fill and folded his arms across his chest.

Charles meanwhile was cursing every brand of alcohol he had ever heard of. How was it possible he had managed to pull the sexiest one night stand in the history of one night stands, and he couldn’t remember a single moment of it? Why was his life a series of horrible misadventures one after the other? What had he ever done to deserve this?

To make matters worse, a shrill whistle cut through the air startling them both and the man turned again to retrieve the mug from the top of the cupboard, reaching over to effortlessly click off the stove and lift the kettle from the burner. He looked at Charles from over his shoulder and asked,

“Tea?”

_Tea_. The man had made him tea. Well then. There was nothing for it.

Marching over he lifted the kettle out of the stranger’s hand and placed it back on the burner before crowding into his space and pinning him against the counter. When there was no resistance, only a sly grin and broad palms coming up to grip Charles by the hips, Charles pressed into him, slid fingers into his hair and kissed him firmly on the lips.

The man clutched at him, made a delicious sound in the back of his throat and licked into Charles’ mouth. Charles shivered, ran his hands down the wide expanse of the man’s chest, hauled narrow hips toward him so he could dip fingers down the back of his jeans in order to grab a handful of that perfect, teasing backside. The man groaned again, rocked his hips into Charles, his fingers tightening on Charles’ waist until the sharp pain of it sent a rush of liquid heat down his spine.

Pulling back he said,

“I’m Charles.” The man smirked.

“I know.”

Charles huffed and pulled back, grabbed the man by his belt loops, hauled him out of the kitchen and back down the hallway toward the bedroom muttering,

“Looks like I need to get reacquainted…”

(Sure he had to stop while the man had Charles’ cock in the wet heat of his mouth, had to kicked at his shoulder and pant, “what is your bloody name, anyways?” Sure the man laughed at him and then ensured that he was reduced to such incoherence that “Erik” was the only word he  _could_  remember…

He’s had worse mornings)


	12. Study Break

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Charles is trying to study. Erik is distracting.
> 
> (mini ficlet written to distract Ike from studying...less fun than what Erik's methods, but I do what I can...)

 

Charles pushed his glasses up his nose and squinted harder at the page in front of him, hoping for a little clarity, a little focus.

It was no good.

“Could you stop? Please?”

There was a rustle of skin moving against silk sheets.

“What? I’m not doing anything.”

Charles glared at the sentence blurring before his eyes, the letters running into each other.

“You know exactly what you’re doing, Erik. Please. I need to study. I have an exam tomorrow.”

There was a gusty sigh from the direction of the bed, a creak and groan of old mattress springs.

“So study.”

Charles read the sentence over again for the fourth time. His glasses slipped down his nose and as he shoved them up he caught from the corner of his eye a glimpse of a bare leg, a tensed thigh muscle, the shadow of a narrow hipbone moving restlessly…

Charles ducked his head closer to his book, his hands raking through his hair, nearly pulling it out in frustration.

“Erik,  _please_ ” he groaned, thumping his head against the book once, twice.

“If you can’t focus now, how will you possible focus tomorrow, with all that additional—oh— _strain_ —” His words were punctuated by a bitten off moan and Charles glanced over at him involuntarily, his ingrained Pavlovian response to that particular sound from Erik’s mouth.

He knew, immediately, that he was done for.

Erik was stretched out above the sheets, completely bare, his skin a valley of soft shadows in the low golden light of the bedside lamp. He was, as always, gorgeous and ridiculous, freckles across broad shoulders, his muscles sharp and defined, flexed in his stomach and in his arm as he slowly stroked himself, his cock hard in the circle of his fingers. The long column of his neck was a perfect arch on the stacked pillows as he stared at Charles from beneath heavy eyelids, his pupils blown wide, his mouth curling smugly at the corners.

He was insufferable and beautiful and absurd, and Charles still couldn’t believe that he was his. That they belonged to each other. It still seemed impossible.

He took off his glasses and threw them down on his abandoned books.

Erik smiled at him,

“Oh, are you done studying? Finally?”

Charles wrenched his sweater over his head, and scrambled clumsily onto the bed on top of him. He caught Erik in the ribs with his knee and Erik elbowed him in the chest as he pulled his hand off his cock to grab him by the shoulders and haul him close. Charles paused for a moment, staring down at Erik’s bright, self-satisfied smile and said,

“Shut up,” before kissing him roughly, biting his lower lip until that smug smile melted into a moan.

 


	13. Impossible Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> True love and children and magic and creatures from the sea...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written in response to cesare's prompt, and this ADORABLE GIF OH GOD:
> 
> http://black--betty.tumblr.com/post/67449923755/codenamecesare-the-fact-that-the-non-merman-of
> 
> Special thanks to widgenstain for the help with the German :D:D:D

>  
> 
> Sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
> 
> ~ _Lewis Carroll_

 

"Mutti, we can’t move away anymore." 

Edie Lehnsherr sighs and shuts her eyes, her hands pausing in the sink, wet up to the wrist in soapy water. Swallowing down the lump of sorrow in her throat, the sick swell of frustration, she says as evenly as she can

"Erik I told you. We can’t stay here. I’m sorry you’re sad, but you have to stop this."

She expects anger—she has seen enough of it in the past few weeks, Erik kicking holes in the walls, slamming his door shut, refusing to eat, refusing to speak to her unless it was to beg or barter in a vain attempt to keep the house by the sea. The house he was born in. As though selling it is some perverse pleasure for her. 

She remembers Jakob placing a broad palm on Erik’s shoulder and the way he spoke to him in a low private voice and called him  _Mein großer Junge_ _._  Remembers how Erik puffed up his little chest with pride and shook his father’s hand. A sudden wave of loneliness threatens to consume her and she takes a moment, frail and hunched over at the sink, to remember how to breathe. 

"No we  _can’t_  leave,” Erik protests, and Edie throws down the dish in her hands in a great splash, a scream fluttering inside her chest preparing to burst free and shatter the windowpanes, until Erik says, “who will take care of Charles?”

When she spins to face him, all words drain from her throat and puddle helplessly at her feet. There is her boy standing in the doorway to the kitchen, his expression obstinate as always. In his arms, however….in his arms he is holding a beautiful little boy who blinks at her with guileless eyes the colour of the sea outside her windows. Water drips from his pale, naked skin and the scales of the fish tale shimmering in the low light where his legs should be.

She gapes at them, sure she is about to fall over as her knees run to liquid and she grips the counter tight with wet hands. The little boy smiles at her and flicks his tale, water splashing over the linoleum. 

"Oh…" she breathes, and Erik scowls at her, hoists Charles up in arms that must surely be aching if he dragged this…this child all the way up the rocky crags to their cottage. 

"He’s mine Mutti. He’s going in the bath." He turns and leaves the kitchen without a look back. 

She stands for a moment staring at the empty space where Erik had been, her head reeling with a thousand thoughts all at once. Her mind blurs with words like  _mermaids_ ,  _water babies_ ,  _nymphs_ ,  _selkies_. Feels her world crashing down again and reordering itself, this time not with the reassurance that she will always feel some splinter of grief in every day, but with a new miraculous sense of wonder. 

She thinks about a boy taking her to his house by the sea, holding her hand under the stars and asking if she believes in love at first sight. When she scoffs and tells him that it’s the stuff of fairytales, he looks at her and smiles that slow, quiet smile. At the time she thought he was teasing her, as he always did, for her relentlessly clinical mind. 

Now she thinks of that smile, and of the tiny boy with a fish tale instead of legs splashing merrily in her upstairs bathroom. Listens to her son laugh for the first time in three months. Wonders if maybe Jakob had brought her here and smiled at her because he had discovered real magic in the world, because he knew that fairytales and true love were real, tangible things, and was waiting for her to figure it out for herself.

She goes back to the dishes. She thinks about her husband smiling. She wonders if a baby mermaid will eat canned tunafish for dinner. 


End file.
